Mormon Apologetics

Updated 12/23/95 Includes the Smithsonian letter on the Book of Mormon

I found something which was refreshing to read from an LDS member, Dr. Stephen E. Thompson Ph.D. an Egyptologist from Brown University. He talks about LDS apologetics - how LDS members defend the Book of Abraham. This is from a 1993 Sunstone Symposium. In the second quote, he is referring to the book "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus" by Charles Larson, which most Mormons would consider an 'anti-Mormon' book. The book "By His.." is excellent and shows how Joseph Smith made the whole thing up and it shoots down every defense LDS apologists have been able to create out of desperation to save the Book of Abraham.

This first quote is on how the LDS book "Encyclopedia of Mormonism" has outright deception about the Book of Abraham. "In the entry on the facsimiles from the Book of Abraham in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, we are told that the prophet's explanations of each of the facsimiles accord with present understanding of Egyptian religious practice. This is truly remarkable statement in view of the fact that those Egyptologists who have commented on Joseph's interpretations of the facsimiles have stated emphatically that his interpretations are not correct from the perspective of the Egyptologist who attempts to interpret Egyptian religious literature and iconography as he or she believes the ancient Egyptians themselves would have.... In my opinion, none of these figures can be made to fit what Smith believed them to be... their interpretation is limited to funerary purposes." Summary: They, the papyri, have nothing to do with Abraham and were written 1500 years after Abraham.

This second quote is on the book "By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus". "In my opinion, it's the best source to go to if you want to know what's been going on with the Book of Abraham in the church. I mean, he (Larson) has a pretty good summary of all the types of approaches that have been made. He does a pretty good job of explaining what they are, what the papyri are... And people worry about the accuracy, is this book accurate or not. Well I'll tell you, he's far more accurate than anything Hugh Nibley ever wrote on the subject, okay... Nothing that's been written from an apologetic (LDS) point of view comes close to it in accuracy. Because frankly, in my opinion, when you start doing apologetics you've got to twist the evidence. That what we (LDS) have just doesn't support us. You've got to do something to it. You've got to manipulate it, you've got to move it...and stuff like that. So, that's my feeling on the book"

The deception in the Encyclopedia is exactly like the stuff I have been reading on the Watchtower history, which came out a short time ago. It too is full of inaccuracies and rewritten history. It is amazing how these groups work and are not shy about deceiving their members or prospective members.

Information from the
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C. 20560

Your recent inquiry concerning the Smithsonian Institution's alleged use of the Book of Mormon as a scientific guide has been received in the Smithsonians Department of Anthropology.

The Book of Mormon is a religious document and not a scientific guide. The Smithsonian Institution has never used it in archaeological research and any information that you have received to the contrary is incorrect. Accurate information about the Smithsonians position is contained in the enclosed Statement Regarding the Book of Mormon, which was prepared to respond to the numerous inquiries that the Smithsonian receives on this topic.

Because the Smithsonian regards the unauthorized use of its name to disseminate inaccurate information as unlawful, we would appreciate your assistance in providing us with the names of any individuals who are misusing the Smithsonians name. Please address any correspondence to:

1. The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archaeologists see no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.

2. The physical type of the American Indian is basically Mongoloid, being most closely related to that of the peoples of eastern, central, and northeastern Asia. Archaeological evidence indicates that the ancestors of the present Indians came into the New World--probably over a land bridge known to have existed in the Bering Strait region during the last Ice Age--in a continuing series of small migrations beginning from about 25,000 to 30,000 years ago.

3. Present evidence indicates that the first people to reach this continent from the East were the Norsemen, who briefly visited the northeastern part of North America around 1000 A.D. and then settled in Greenland. There is no evidence to show that they reached Mexico or Central America.

4. None of the principal Old World domesticated food plants or animals (except the dog) occurred in the New World in pre- Columbian times. This is one of the main lines of evidence supporting the scientific premise that contacts with Old World civilizations, if they occurred, were of very little significance for the development of American Indian civilizations. American Indians had no wheat, barley, oats, millet, rice, cattle, pigs, chickens, horses, donkeys, or camels before 1492. (Camels and horses were in the Americas, along with the bison, mammoth, and mastodon, bat all these animals became extinct around 10,000 B.C. at the time the early big game hunters traveled across the Americas.)

5. Iron, steel, glass, and silk were not used in the New World before 1492 (except for occasional use of unsmelted meteroic iron). Native copper was worked in various locations in pre- Columbian times, but true metallurgy was limited to southern Mexico and the Andean region, where its occurrence in late prehistoric times involved gold, silver, copper, and their alloys, but not iron.

6. There is a possibility that the spread of cultural traits across the Pacific to Mesoamerica and the northwestern coast of South America began several hundred years before the Christian era. However, any such inter-hemispheric contacts appear to have been the results of accidental voyages originating in eastern and southern Asia. It is by no means certain that even such contacts occurred with the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, or other peoples of Western Asia and the Near East.

7. No reputable Egyptologist or other specialist on Old World archeology, and no expert on New World prehistory, has discovered or confirmed any relationship between archeological remains in Mexico and archeological remains in Egypt.

8. Reports of findings of ancient Egyptian, Hebrew, and other Old World writings in the New World in pre-Columbian contexts have frequently appeared in newspapers, magazines and sensational books. None of these claims has stood up to examination by reputable scholars. No inscriptions using Old World forms of writing have been shown to have occurred in any part of the Americas before 1492 except for a few Norse rune stones which have been found in Greenland.

9. There are copies of the Book of Mormon in the library of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution